"The verb is leoðan, leað, luðon (crescere), O.S. lioðan, lôð,
luðun. Leluðon (_Cædm._ 93. 28.) is creverunt, pullulant; and
3eloðen (ap. Hickes, p. 135. note) onustus, but rather cretus.
Elene, 1227. 3eloðen unðep leápum (cretus sub foliis)."
It has been surmised that LEDE was connected with the O.N.
hlÿt[4]--which not only signified _sors, portio_, but _res
consistentia_--and the A.-S. hlet, hlyt, lot, portion, inheritance:
thus, in the A.-S. Psal. xxx. 18., on hanðum ðinum hlÿt mín, _my
heritage is in thy hands_. Notker's version is: Mín lôz ist in dínen
handen. I have since found that Kindlinger (_Geschichte der Deutchen
Hörigkeit_) has made an attempt to derive it from _Lied, Lit_, which in
Dutch, Flemish, and Low German, still signify a _limb_; I think,
unsuccessfully.
Ray, in his _Gloss. Northanymbr._, has "unlead, nomen opprobrii;" but he
gives a false derivation: Grose, in his _Provincial Glossary_, "unleed
or unlead, a general name for any crawling venomous creature, as a toad,
&c. It is sometimes ascribed to a man, and then it denotes a sly wicked
fellow, that in a manner creeps to do mischief. See Mr. Nicholson's
Catalogue."
In the 2d edition of Mr. Brockett's _Glossary_, we have: "Unletes,
displacers or destroyers of the farmer's produce."
This provincial preservation of a word of such rare occurrence in
Anglo-Saxon, and of which no example has yet been found in old English,
is a remarkable circumstance. The word has evidently signified, like the
Gothic, in the first place _poor_; then _wretched_, _miserable_; and
hence, perhaps, its opprobrious sense of _mischievous_ or _wicked_.
"In those rude times when wealth or movable property consisted
almost entirely of living money, in which debts were contracted
and paid, and for which land was given in mortgage or sold; it
is quite certain that the serfs were transferred with the land,
the lord considering them as so much live-stock, or part of his
_chattels_."
A vestige of this feeling with regard to dependants remains in the use
of the word _Man_ (which formerly had the same sense as _lede_). We
still speak of "a general and his men," and use the expression "our
men." But, happily for the masses of mankind, few vestiges of serfdom
and slavery, and those in a mitigated form, now virtually exist.